Thursday, November 6, 2014

It’s not exactly radical to suggest that some directors tend to
express stuff about their natures by focusing on certain themes and
scenarios in film after film. That just-posted Vulture video made light of the fact that Interstellar director Chris Nolan has something about dead wives, whatever that actually means in terms of his psychology. It’s obvious that the Wachowski brothers, particularly the former Larry (now Lana) Wachowski, were expressing something primal about hot lesbians when they made Bound (’96) and again when they included a brief glimpse of some girl-on-girl action in V for Vendetta
(’06). (It’s not my business but the general understanding is that
Lana likes women.) And as long as we’re discussing (or will soon
discuss) getting badly beaten up, it’s obvious that characters played by
Marlon Brando, who had a lot of clout in the ’50s and
early ’60s, were frequently beaten bloody, whipped, shot full of holes,
burned to death, etc. It seems fair to infer that Brando was probably
saying something about guilt and a need to be punished.

All to imply that Unbroken director Angelina Jolie, now gracing the cover of Vanity Fair and almost certain to be coronated with a Best Director nomination (unless Unbroken turns out to be a stiff), has some degree of interest in innocent captives being abused and beaten. I”m not
saying it’s an obsession or anything, but there’s no arguing that
within three years she’s directed two films that deal with this — Unbroken, a true-life tale about an Air Force lieutenant, Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell),
who endures all kinds of brutality in a Japanese P.O.W camp after
surviving in a raft after crash-landing in the Pacific, and In The Land of Blood and Honey
(’11), which is set during the Bosnian War and deals with a
less-than-kind, sado-masochistic relationship between a Serbian soldier (Goran Kostic) and his former peacetime girlfriend (Zana Marjanovic),
a Bosnian who falls under his control during the conflict and whom he
protects in exchange for sex or love or some mixture of the two.
Add this to reports that a wilder, much-younger Jolie used to express
enthusiasm for a certain degree of (am I about to lose award-season ads
from Universal?) S&M in her black-leather days of the ’90s. Six
years ago the Sun posted an apparently legit tape in which she spoke about how she’s “considering making a film about
S&M because it comes from ‘that real, real place.'” Which is all
totally fine. S&M is a very mild and almost conservative culture
when you get to know it. (I say this as someone who visited the Hellfire Club
two or three times in the early ’80s.) And if you insist on regarding
S&M as creepy, you’ll at least acknowledge that 20-somethings have
always had their eccentricities, especially movie stars. Jolie is
obviously on a totally different track now (married, six kids, U.N
humanitarian work, living in a big chateau on a French vineyard,
photographed with Queen Elizabeth three or four weeks ago) but when you couple her history with an element shared by Unbroken and Blood and Honey,
you could deduce a current or two. That’s all I’m saying. Directors
are attracted to certain subjects, and they all put themselves into
their films to varying degrees. No biggie.